Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday November 12, 2012 @04:04PM
from the bad-stuff dept.

New submitter thn writes "John McAfee, who started the antivirus software giant named after him, has been accused of murder in Belize and is wanted. McAfee had taken to 'posting on a drug-focused Russian message board...about his attempts to purify the psychoactive compounds colloquially known as "bath salts,"' Gizmodo wrote. The scariest aspect of this story may be the fact that an entire lab was constructed for John McAfee's research purposes. Because of his efforts to extract chemicals from natural chemical plans McAfee was able to justify his experiments in a country that is largely unregulated."

Forget McAfee. I want a movie about Henry Nicholas [vanityfair.com] of Broadcom. Henry was living large: drugs, prostitutes, secret sex lair being built under his house while his family lived in it.. It's as though he was living his life just to make a crazy movie about it.

McAfee? I don't want to watch a movie about some some guy that is obsessed with taking drugs rectally.

With as many obscenely rich people as there are, why don't we hear more about this type of thing? Is the average hundred millionaire really boring, or are they just better at keeping secrets? If you have a hundred million, why wouldn't you build a sex dungeon?

Here's US v. Nicholas [leagle.com] in which (under oath) he admits to drug use. So there's part of it verified. Find the divorce case which was they fought to keep sealed (but the L.A. times fought for) and I'm sure you'll find information about his infidelity with prostitutes. With some quick googling I was only able to find his attempts to keep it sealed.

Did Vanity Fair possibly exaggerate or sensationalize? Sure, but nothing in there is all that

It's more efficient than oral, because it bypasses the first pass metabolism [wikipedia.org] ; a large fraction of many drugs are metabolised by the liver on the first pass of the substance through the bloodstream out of the intestine, whereas the venous plexuses of the anus go straight into the main blood system.

You can achieve the same effect with a lower dose and fewer toxic effects. Some nations don't have the hangups about their arseholes that we do in the English speaking nations and consider suppositories a normal form of medication.

i am not being a prude, you have a right to do anything you want with your body. i am saying it is your responsibility when communicating activities of heightened danger to indicate the heightened danger

there are many drugs and delivery methods where there is a large tolerance to wildly swinging dosages and rates. then there are many other drugs and delivery methods where slight alterations in dosage and rates means the difference between a good time and death. meaning no one should engage in these efforts casually. but unfortunately, since recreation and escaping responsibility is often the motivation, people die with dangerous dosages and delivery methods

education and care is the proper antidote to bad experience with drugs. i didn't say prudery. but you can reduce the power of prudery in society by being careful when you communicate, and educating people as to dangers and harsh downsides. it doesn't make you a killjoy. death is a killjoy

FTA: Update 1:37 p.m. PT To include additional information from CBS that indicates McAfee is not wanted for the killing of Gregory Faull as Gizmodo previously reported but is only wanted for questioning at this time.

No No you got it wrong. News isn't about fact, it is about making people guilty in the eyes of society so they can be shunned from society, because our normal court system is designed to try to make sure innocent people go free.

Recreational suppositories... it is a whole different level of drug addiction. It's similar to my feelings regarding IV drug abuse.

Did you read TFA? His instructions are to "lick your finger", dip your finger in the powder, and then ram it home. So ignoring the lack of dose control and pure nastiness here... drug abusers aren't exactly known for hygiene. I'm kind of hoping he still retains enough sense to wash his finger between doses!

It's not that uncommon. You have lots of blood vessels close to the surface there, so drugs get into your blood stream quickly. There was a story recently about people dying from vodka suppositories - so much alcohol goes into their blood so quickly that it's fatal.

FTA: Update 1:37 p.m. PT To include additional information from CBS that indicates McAfee is not wanted for the killing of Gregory Faull as Gizmodo previously reported but is only wanted for questioning at this time.

You have to cut Gizmodo some slack here - they got their information from a phone they found in a bar.

"[...] where they saw 52 year old U.S National Mr. GREGORY VIANT FAULL, of the said address, lying face up in a pool of blood with an apparent gunshot wound on the upper rear part of his head apparently dead."

They are describing what the police reported seeing upon their arrival: Mr. Faull, lying face up in a pool of blood, with what appeared to be a gunshot wound on the upper rear part of his head, apparently dead when they arrived.

"Looks on first inspection like a gunshot wound" doesn't necessarily mean

All of these can be consistent with someone "apparently dead" upon arrival, but not actually dead after further investigation and treatment.

This. Also, it's not that uncommon for people to survive gunshot wounds to the head, depending on the weapon and the exact path of the bullet, so even with a gunshot wound to the head there's no reason to jump to conclusions.

If they don't have a publicly releasable autopsy report available then of course you're going to get these "apparently" statements. It's obvious when you look at it but you can't be legally "certain" until someone pronounces them dead and determines the cause of death.

You don't know the gunshot killed him until the coroner does his thing. He could have already been dead. Hell he might have been dead from natural causes, and the gunshot was just desecration of a corpse.

There's a big difference between first degree murder and mutilating a corpse. They have to be sure. It's their job to be sure.

There have been cases of people with self inflicted gunshots to the head living through the event. It's possible, even if unlikely, that he's asleep in a coma when the initail responders arrive. And if there's that much blood and it's in matted hair, he could have been killed with a pick-axe or hammer with a similar look and result, at least until he's thoroughly examined.

The specific properties of the drugs he was attempting to isolate also fit in well with what those closest to him have reported: that he is an enthusiastic amateur pharmacologist with a longstanding interest in drugs that induce sexual behavior in women. Indeed, former friends of McAfee have said he could be extremely persistent and devious in trying to coerce women who rebuff his advances to have sex with him.

You see ladies, what we male nerds have to turn to? Stop being so uptight.

And the link between the murder, and bath-salts is....
The hysteria in the U.S. over recreational drug use is amazing. For example, all the news stories about Johnny Lewis mentioned police speculation that he was on the drug "smiles" when he went berserk, despite there being no evidence whatseover of this. e.g.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/actor-johnny-lewis-suspected-taking-drug-smiles-killings/story?id=17346564 [go.com]
Time and time again, these speculative drug links make a big splash in the media, and then by the time they prove false, no one cares.
I would have thought Slashdot was a bit more into looking at the evidence before making wild speculation, but apparently not.

The specific properties of the drugs he was attempting to isolate also fit in well with what those closest to him have reported: that he is an enthusiastic amateur pharmacologist with a longstanding interest in drugs that induce sexual behavior in women. Indeed, former friends of McAfee have said he could be extremely persistent and devious in trying to coerce women who rebuff his advances to have sex with him.

I wonder how much of this article is true. Sounds like a total douche.

Jeez - I knew this guy. For me this is what makes this story incredibly interesting.

He used to frequent a fairly small yoga class in Aptos about 10 years ago with his wife at the time. I remember he brought in a bunch of yoga books which he wrote and gave copies to everybody. I didn't know he was the McAfee guy at first but he seemed like an interesting person.

He later suffered from the local small-town rumor mill for something he did that I didn't pay attention to.

After actually RTFA'ing the whole thing, and not just the first paragraph, it looks like this might be also a lot about the story of a drug abuser falling prey to some subtle secondary effects of his drug of choice. If he was as keen on experimenting with bath salts and other psychotropic drugs as he seems to be, I fully would expect him to lose it at some point. Who knows if he actually committed the murder - but there's all kinds of other lessons in here.

Yeah, I know, Libertarianism always leads to paradise on earth, and ipso facto, anything that isn't paradise isn't Libertarianism. Well, you got that right. Exactly like how communism has never actually been properly implemented.

Yeah, I know, Libertarianism always leads to paradise on earth, and ipso facto, anything that isn't paradise isn't Libertarianism. Well, you got that right. Exactly like how communism has never actually been properly implemented.

Right, because reality is binary - there is no such thing as middle ground, only extremely bad and extremely good.

But of course, this is likely not limited to just 'extremists'. People generally don't want to be wrong, after all. Then of course there is the fact that people who really, really don't like something would probably want to blame everything that goes wrong on the thing that they don't like.

On slashdor Libertarians also get mod points. Almost every post I've ever made here that was critical of Libertarianism has been modded down. Gives you a good idea of how much liberty would be extended to critics in a Libertarian regime.

Funny how whenever someone cites an entirely subjective, blatantly false example of libertarianism not working, a bunch of libertarians jump out and say "No, that's not libertarianism!"

Of course we do; what would you expect, for us stand idly by as ignorami infect the world with their fallacious thinking? That's just not the Libertarian way.

Why is this funny? Because communists always used to do the same thing. Seems like all political extremists share the same methodology.

Kinda like how McCarthy and his ilk would label people he didn't agree with as "communist," then convince the ignorant masses that these "communists" were horrible, horrible 'political extremists,' even in spite of a complete lack of evidence?

Once again, you demonstrate your complete inability to read and respond to what was written.

I am asserting that in no way, shape, or form, is Belize a "libertarian paradise," and any attempt to paint it as such is a foolish bit of sleight of hand that tries to define "libertarianism" as "anything that I think is foolish or want to make fun of."

Perhaps, since you seem to take issue with my statement, you can explain for us just what makes Belize the "libertarian paradise" you imagine it is? I mean, surely you're not just making this shit up as you go - surely you know ALL ABOUT Belize's government & their policies, and can tell us exactly how the Belize model fits exactly what libertarians everywhere are advocating?

The point about Belize is not that it fits in with some theoretical libertarian model of paradise, it's simply that it's the sort of country where if you're a rich cunt you can get away with a lot. And to those of us opposed to libertarian politics that is precisely what a libertarian system would lead to, even more than is the case at present.

Look, its another person twisting Libertarianism in to something it isn't so it sounds unpleasent to people who don't know any better.

Looks like you've got your work cut out for you, because what most of my self-described Libertarian friends say would fit right into this stereotype. I.e., indistinguishable from pure anarchy. Basing that on the 2 most of-repeated "Libertarian" maxims:

A) Government Regulation is Evil. Admittedly if you corner them, you can usually get a self-described Libertarian to confess that there's room for regulation, but when operating on auto-pilot they tend to forget to mention that. There's no clearly-defined ground rules for us outsiders to understand.

B) Taxes are Theft. Because apparently whatever government functions are admissible under Libertarianism are funded by the fairies. A belief also promoted liberally in recent years by the Conservative crowd who took the "tax" out of tax-and-spend, but not the "spend".

There's you a starting point. It's up to you to take the ball and run with it. Have fun!

A) Government Regulation is Evil. Admittedly if you corner them, you can usually get a self-described Libertarian to confess that there's room for regulation, but when operating on auto-pilot they tend to forget to mention that. There's no clearly-defined ground rules for us outsiders to understand.

B) Taxes are Theft. Because apparently whatever government functions are admissible under Libertarianism are funded by the fairies. A belief also promoted liberally in recent years by the Conservative crowd who took the "tax" out of tax-and-spend, but not the "spend".

It's only crazy if you take a geeky "black or white, all or nothing" view of these things - which admittedly many Libartarians do. Regulation is evil and taxes are theft, sure; that;s means we try to solve problems with the least regulation and taxation that actually solves the problem. That's quite a bit of taxes and regulation, actually. But seeking a solution that minimizes both, out of many possible solutions, is still a valid goal.

Are you asserting the defining body for a term is an organization bearing the same name? Then "democracy" means "whatever is on the Democrat's platform" and republican government means one ruled by Republicans, right?

Calm down everyone. You're all confusing three distinct phenomena: classic libertarianism, an inconsequential modern political third party, and the contemporary mainstream Randian wannabe sociopolitical movement of the same name that at best is nothing more than a reactionary coalition of political, social, and civic amateurs, some of which are actual liberal pro-legalization college kids that think they are brilliant scholars because they got an A in poli-sci and soc, and in-fact sociopolitical conservative moralists that are anti-tax because they either fear their money going to welfare or are borderline confederacy-seeking states rightists that want a Fed so small they can drown it in a bathtub. Add in a dash of actual anarcho-capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs and crazed gold standard pushers of alternative currencies for flavor. By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics. To put it simply, they don't know what they don't know.

To put it another way, I have recently in the last decade taken a refreshed interest in physics after sleep walking through it as a student and a professional. But, much of my new learning comes from advocacy sources like Michio Kaku. I enjoy doing fun things with magnets and lasers. My teleportation machine is awesome, but I assure you, none of you should use it no matter how much I tell you I've worked out all the kinks because I'm a physics tourist and my input should be taken as if it came from an enthusiastic child that still believes in Santa.

If by that you mean Anarcho-Capitalist, you should go outside and hang yourself from a tree. There is no legitimate crossover between the philosophical ideas of Anarchism and those of Capitalism. They are two different things that libertarians try to yoke together to make their beliefs sound more radical and less based on pure economic and ethical selfishness by grafting on the Anarcho- part.

If you want a society where brute economic power reigns through the imaginary "free market" then just have the gu

Taxes that do not benefit me are theft. The government exists to serve the people. Taking my money and giving it to someone else, so that it does not benefit me is theft. Taking my money and using it for purposes that do benefit me is OK.

And this is where the essential sociooathy of libertarianism is exposed. As a society, most normal people think it good that the old, poor, ill or otherwise disadvantaged are provided for in some way. We also think it is a good idea to have roads, power grids, clean water and so on available to everyone. Having a justice system and police force is a good idea too, to protect the weak and vulnerable from the strong and ruthless. Giving everyone a good education helps to promote general well being, prosper

{partial sarcasm}Well that is the problem with Open Source software when the creator stops being involved in the product the product in essence dies and goes on the waste side, as there is a loss of interest in the product. While commercial apps have teams of people and if it makes money it will continue on with the loss of it leader and it can even move from company to company{/partial sarcasm}

{partial sarcasm}Well that is the problem with Open Source software when the creator stops being involved in the product the product in essence dies and goes on the waste side, as there is a loss of interest in the product. While commercial apps have teams of people and if it makes money it will continue on with the loss of it leader and it can even move from company to company{/partial sarcasm}

Sarcasm aside, Not necessarily.

With Open Source (FOSS, FLOSS - whatever you want to call it) if the creator stops being involved, the community behind it can pick it up. If there isn't enough community interest, then it falls by the wayside, but then it was either too early or not interesting enough.

With Commercial, if the business has a problem (e.g. the CEO gets indicted) and goes under, or is in serious question; then there is no one else to turn to. Your saving grace would be if someone bought it out and continued the product, but there's no guarantee that will happen and most companies won't want to toss the financial resources to buy the company if they don't think the product is worth it - e.g. there's a cheaper alternative.

For Hans and ReiserFS, RFS4 got continued by the community, but its still problematic and will now never make it to the mainline kernel.
For McAfee, well, there's a sufficiently large corportate entity that nothing will happen - it'll go on, and if necessary change its name to avoid bad associated publicity due to any trial or bad outcome for Mr. McAfee.

The reason reiserFS went the way it did is because nobody around understands it the way Hans did (mathematically) that can also do the programming work...

Eh, no. The thing you may not realize is that Hans Reiser wasn't even the primary author on later versions. He hired Russian programmers willing to work cheap, and seemed focused on being The Globetrotting Wheeling Dealing Genius In Charge rather than coding anything himself. Also, this lone genius mythology about ReiserFS possessing some kind of ineffable brilliance which only Reiser could understand needs to go away. Plenty of people understood every single concept in ReiserFS.